Vancouver: Renée Saklikar was 23 when her aunt and uncle visited Canada for the first time. Her aunt, a gynecologist, and her uncle, a surgeon, were in the United States for a medical conference and decided to visit family up in the Vancouver area. Then, missing their young son back home in India, they decided to go home early. They flew out of Montreal in the early hours (GMT) of June 23, 1985, on Air India Flight 182.
Their death in that flight’s bombing, and that of all 329 people on board, was devastating to Saklikar, who later became an advocate for victims’ families. A lawyer by training who turned to writing and poetry later in life (and is married to B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix), Saklikar has just published a searing work of what she calls docu-poetry. It imagines the simple lives and violent deaths of all on board the doomed flight, in particular the 82 children under the age of 13. Children of air india: un/authorized exhibits and interjections is informed by Saklikar’s personal losses and her extensive research into the tragedy.
In this book, her first, facts meet fiction with devastating scenarios, such as what the plane ride was like: An eager boy in the back row awaits a tour of the cockpit; a mother tires of her demanding little son, dressed in OshKosh overalls.
10/11/13 Marsha Lederman/The Globe and Mail
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Their death in that flight’s bombing, and that of all 329 people on board, was devastating to Saklikar, who later became an advocate for victims’ families. A lawyer by training who turned to writing and poetry later in life (and is married to B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix), Saklikar has just published a searing work of what she calls docu-poetry. It imagines the simple lives and violent deaths of all on board the doomed flight, in particular the 82 children under the age of 13. Children of air india: un/authorized exhibits and interjections is informed by Saklikar’s personal losses and her extensive research into the tragedy.
In this book, her first, facts meet fiction with devastating scenarios, such as what the plane ride was like: An eager boy in the back row awaits a tour of the cockpit; a mother tires of her demanding little son, dressed in OshKosh overalls.
10/11/13 Marsha Lederman/The Globe and Mail
